


Running out of sins

by Moonshine_Givens



Category: Sinbad (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, M/M, Outlaws, Pre-Slash, alternative universe, quick mention of minor's prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonshine_Givens/pseuds/Moonshine_Givens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ship Providence is a crap bar, filled with prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers, outlaws. A place to come to die, an elephants’ graveyard. Yet, Gunnar always comes back, looking for that group of people that doesn't really belong together, not yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running out of sins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dorinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/gifts).



> I really hope you enjoy this gift! I was so so so tired when I finished writing it: it was just over the deadline, so I'm sorry for the many mistakes you're sure to find. Even so, I was so very happy to write for this fandom and for you, and I do hope you enjoy not only this small gift, but many happiness on this time of year.  
> Also, I hope 2014 brings you joy and many victories, adventures and a clear ocean ahead!
> 
> OH, ALSO: this song here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rdaVBBEltA - was the one that inspired me to write this fic, so if you can, please listen to it while reading it! It's a brazilian song, and the translation of the lyrics are on the end of the fic.  
> Thank you!

The streets look like there’s no one left alive inside the houses, no one left alive anywhere. It’s never an easy path, this one Gunnar’s taking. He walked those streets many times before, but they always look unfamiliar, labyrinth-like, as if his mind doesn’t want him to retain the memory of that place. Maybe it’s whatever self-preservation instinct he’s got left, trying to keep him away.

He comes back anyway.

One of those days this place is going to eat him alive.

“The ship Providence” – or just The Ship –, the crap bar he comes every time he hits rock bottom, looks just like the last time Gunnar’s been here: a place to come to die. An elephants’ graveyard. That’s what it always looks like.

There’s a woman with bad dyed red hair sitting a corner, scared eyes hidden under leaking mascara and a wide shark smile. As soon as a man walks over in her general direction, she eagerly spreads her legs and pulls her skirt up, in a position she surely believes it’s inviting. They keep ignoring her, and her eyes keeps growing scared, her smiles shows more teeth, the skirt goes higher. Another man walks by.

Gunnar knows the feeling. He never had to use a skirt to get clients, but he remembers sitting in a corner of this same shithole of a bar, cleaning his guns at plain sight, hoping beyond hope that the world was still enough of a rotten place that yet another man wanted to end someone’s life.

There weren’t guaranties for being a paid gun, just as there weren’t for being a paid lover. Some nights the world just runs out of sins.

He wonders if his eyes betrayed fear as much as hers.

“Hey. Where’s your Mistress?” he says, approaching her.

She doesn’t show him much interest. He’s an old regular of the bar but not a regular of the hookers. “She’s not my Mistress anymore. She’s no one mistress.”

Gunnar stops in his tracks. “Since when?”

“Two weeks now.” She looks around, but no one is paying attention, no one cares. “Word is she ain’t looking back.”

“So she’s gone?”

“Gone?” the girls snorts. “Where to? Ain’t nowhere to run, mister. She’s upstairs with the rest of your clique.”

Gunnar doesn’t try to correct her, doesn’t clarify that they’re nothing to each other. If one of them dies, the others would probably hear about it on the next month. Those people upstairs don’t have his phone number, his address, they’re not really part of his life.

Not yet, the night tells him.

The stairs are on the back, seven steps that take him to a familiar room, filled with more bad memories than good ones – the day the Doc had an terrible accident in the corner near the bathroom; the shooting that resulted in the death of Nala’s father; the stab wound that almost bled him to death before the same Doc had time to patch him up; Sinbad yelling all day and all night over his brother’s death.

Why would anyone come here?

He goes up the stairs anyway, and he’s sure they’ll also be there, sure to find his… not friends, not clique, not gang. Not family.

Not yet.

He may not know what place that group of people has in his life, but he knows they’ll be there: sure thing, before he opens the door, Rina runs into him, bouncing back on his much bigger form.

“Going somewhere?” Gunnar asks, making himself small (or trying hard to) so she can pass him by if she so wishes: he knows that what terrifies Rina more than anything is the sense of being trapped.

“Wha- oh, Gunnar. Hey.” She looks relived for a second once she recognizes him, but there’s a certain anxiety in her eyes. “Thought about checking downstairs. See if there’s anything worth my time around the bar.”

They communicate like this: he knows what is “worth her time”. She’s probably looking for an easy mark to steal from, one of the guys who are not regulars – so she can’t get in trouble – that happened to come for Nala’s whores. Well, not her whores anymore, apparently.

She avoids stealing on the place she’s so fond of, but it’s the third of the month, it’ll soon be the seventh: it’s near pay day. She ran into bad luck, Rina. One time, still new in town, she thought she had found an easy job, a suitcase inside a BMW, parked in a desert street. Turns out the suitcase belonged to one Akbari, the biggest drug lord in town. She had crossed paths with the devil that night.

He found her fast, of course, and nearly killed her. He could have, actually, just as easily: no one would miss the homeless orphan who had just got in town, the little boyish thief with big eyes and empty pockets. But he was a business man through and through – his solution was to make her in eternal debt with him. Every seventh day of the month, she had to pay him two thousand dollars, in cash or in merchandise. It was either that or die.

It was a sophisticated kind of torture. By the first day of the month, Rina would start getting anxious, counting the coins on her pockets over and over again, hoping they somehow could reproduce and generate more money. By the third, she would take any job that sounded possible, be it reasonable or not. The sixth was the worst day. The rest of the group always tried to gather by the sixth, for many different reasons: they could give her some money, could help her find possible marks. Mostly, they had to make sure she was still in one piece: so many of the sixths days of every month Gunnar spent with Rina’s blood on his hands, he’d lost count by now. She would become reckless, desperate, because every clock ticking was bringing her closer to her death.

As the months passed, Gunnar came to understand they were all waiting for her death, they just didn’t knew if it would come in the sixth or in the seventh day of a terrible month.

“Sorry. From what I saw downstairs, there’s no mark worth the trip. Movement’s slow today, it seems.”

She looks defeated, but not for long. She never shows weakness for long.

“Figured that much, yeah. What with Nala going out of business, the johns get anxious. You heard about that, yet?” she asks him.

“Not all of it, no.”

“Anwar will tell you about it, he knows the whole story better than me. Or maybe she’ll tell you herself, she’s moping on a corner. Maybe you can cheer her up, none of us could.”

“I seriously doubt that.” Gunnar was not the heart of this operation, that he knew. “Do you want to go buy us some fries?”

He doesn’t ask her if she had dinner, or if she ate anything along the day. He never asks her those things, but he gives her money anyway, and Rina knows he won’t eat any fries.

She nods and continues on her path down stairs. Gunnar lets himself wonder for a second on why he does this. Maybe it’s because she’s so thin, looking like a mouse, this little orphan thief trying to survive, small and fragile and violent like a beast, biting and scratching her way into life, because she should be dead a long time ago: she never had it easy. Maybe it’s because he somehow knows she would be there for him, even with all of her apparent selfishness. Or maybe it’s because it’s the third day of the month, and that is reason enough.

He gets inside, finally; most of them are there. The silence is uncharacteristic, usually someone gets music going and there’s possible business to discuss. But tonight there’s just silence, and Gunnar knows he has to prepare to endure the night and it’s darkness.

He zeros on Nala, since she’s the one he knows he has to be worried with (what with Rina already eating downstairs). She’s sitting in a couch with all the dignity that’s her signature, but there’s something about the way she looks around the room: empty eyes.

She’s known as Mistress, or Princess if someone is bold enough to call her that to her face. Even in this bar, outside of this little room Gunnar doesn’t know anyone who actually knows her real name. Her daddy was the biggest pimp in the east part of the town, with more whorehouses all around than fingers on his hands.

He was actually the first to hire Gunnar as a paid gun. Or yet: he hired Gunnar as a bouncer for one of his clubs, later as a thug to “stand in the back and look scary”. He then asked for a favor: that guy is an asshole, he’s beating up girls, could you teach him a lesson? Gunnar happily obliged. It wasn’t long after that the first killing job came up, and it paid good, better than anything Gunnar ever got. And it sounded easy. Gunnar pulled a trigger.

( _now he knows, though, now he understands: he’s the one that has to carry around the weight of the lives he took over silver coins_ )

Anyway, the man had a beautiful daughter that people always assumed was only around to see daddy work, that perfect princess with her golden jewels and her perfect skin. She didn’t belong among the rejected, the dirty, the outlaws, the miserable. But then her daddy was gone and she took over the business, before any of his associates could spit out the word “bitch”.

Gunnar worked for her a lot, in the beginning. She had much to prove and she didn’t mind having to use violence to say it. She was of the opinion it was best to frighten people right at the beginning so she wouldn’t have to keep facing them along the way.

She never hired his gun for murder, though.

Because this was Nala in a nutshell: she knew what it took to be as big as her farther was, and she was willing to go half the way, but somewhere along the way things would become too much for her and she would bail out. She was too good to handle the fact she was selling women and men over her own profit.

Gunnar sits by her side, in silence. If she wants to tell him, she’ll tell him, if not, he wants her to know he’s still here. Still by her side.

“Gunnar,” she says quietly, after so many moments in silence staring at her glass. “I’ll ask you this once and I want you to be honest with me. Did you know?”

“About what?”

She’s going to ask about one of her daddy’s murders. She’s going to ask about one of the lives Gunnar ended and it’ll turn out the person was a good person and he’s going to finally have to face a ghost of one of his victims. Gunnar feels as if his worst fear was about to turn real.

“That my daddy sold minors. Boys and girls.”

“What?” The question was so different from what Gunnar was expecting to hear that he didn’t understand it for a whole minute. When it finally made sense, he couldn’t believe. “Nala, what are you saying? How…” he has to swallow before he can asks. “How young?”

She looks at him still, staring in silence. She must be convinced his shock is real, because she answers:

“The younger to ever work for him was sixteen. But there were a lot of seventeen. He… he had a whole house just for it.”

She looks back at her glass. Gunnar knows now why she couldn’t keep doing it, why she was inconsolable. But now there was nothing left for her: she spent so many days fighting her way to become the Mistress, to take the place her father left empty, she created a lot of enemies in town – Akbari being one of them. How would she survive now, without the power?

But Gunnar knew she wouldn’t go back in her decision.

“I’m glad, though, Gunnar.” She raises her eyes. “Glad you didn’t betray me. That you didn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t be his man if I knew. I would never.”

She smiles, and it’s the saddest thing. “I’m glad.”

He holds her hand for a second, the friendlier gesture he ever made towards her: there was a no-touching policy around Nala, that came mostly to make it clear that she wasn’t on the menu. Gunnar, as her gun thug, respected that policy. But she wasn’t the Mistress anymore and… and they could, someday, be friends. Real friends.

They weren’t friends, not that night. Not yet.

Gunnar gets up and goes to find Anwar, because he knows Rina is going to be back with her beloved french fries any time soon and Doc can never pay fully attention to anyone else once she gets in the room. So he looks for the man, sitting across a table talking with the Cook – the crazy Filipino meth cook that seems to be out of reality 89% of the time, ready to explode with his lab at any given moment: the best part is, he doesn’t even use meth, he barely drinks beer.

“Hey, Cook. Doc. You okay tonight, Anwar?”

That’s another particular way of communication. Gunnar will always ask Anwar this same question, and the man will always answer in some variation of “Fine, thank you.” Somehow, Gunnar will be able to read how truthful the answer really is: it’s important to always check on him. Always. Always.

Doc once had it all: a nice, established life as a good doctor, helping people, saving lives. And then he was betting big money on dogs and horses and soccer games and cards, anything he could, really. Those were the days.

One little filthy addiction and suddenly he were in the hands of Akbari as well, just as much as if he had stolen from one of Akbari’s BMWs. The man started making requests: a bottle of this pill, one injection, one prescript medicine. Of course, eventually, there were too many bottles going missing, and Anwar lost the right to call himself a doctor.

Akbari wasn’t satisfied, of course. But then again, he was a business man, he knew how to adapt: Anwar now had to work with the Cook, cooking meth. Sometimes the weight of his life becomes too much, and he gets low: they’re always trying to bring him back, prevent the man from getting swallowed in his depression. He wanders around, trying to understand at which point his life became so empty – he used to save lives, now he helps to destroy them. This knowledge’s slowly destroying the man, and there’s only so much they can do for him.

“I’m worried about Nala.” It’s Anwar’s answer tonight, different from what he usually says. And it’s… it’s good, actually, because they never admit to be worried about each other. They never admit to be more than just companions in drinks.

Gunnar has to slowly consider what will be his answer.

“I... I think we all are. But don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

Anwar lifts his head to look at him in the eyes: there’s so much hope in those eyes. Hope that he’s not alone, that there’s something to which he belongs.

Gunnar doesn’t know what to do with this hope, because there’s still nothing certain about this little group of them, besides the desire of care for others and being cared by others. Nothing solid, nothing real between them.

Not yet, not yet.

But there could be.

Rina comes back with her french fries, stuffing her mouth full: for a moment they all watch her eat, and it’s a good vision, even if a little sad: it’s the third day of the month, she won’t have the money by the seventh, but she loves french fries and she’s happy right now.

They don’t have a magic solution for the amount of problems each one of them is carrying around. They are all emerged in their own pain, lost, scarred souls drifting in the night in a small room over the bar, but they can all stop and watch Rina eating french fries in her true happiness. It’s a miracle.

A few hours later, they’re all still there: Nala trying to find an answer to her problems in the bottom of her glass; Rina trying to sleep in a corner, failing; Gunnar trying and also failing in understanding the crazy card game only Anwar can play with the Cook. All there, as if they were waiting for him to come.

Sinbad gets there in the last hour before the sunrise. The room is being filled with the gray sunrise light: Sinbad opens the door, and Gunnar knows he has the power to change everything.

Gunnar watches Sinbad. He always does. He knows Sinbad is something special, something precious that could guide them all through the storm ahead.

Now, Gunnar understood a few things. He understood that there was something about Sinbad that spoke deeply, personally with _him_. He knew that, for him, Sinbad was more, and that their bond had a carnal dimension that the other connections in the group didn’t share. He also understood that this wasn’t one sided, that Sinbad soul and body also responded to his own soul and body, but somehow Sinbad wasn’t able to catch on this.

Not yet.

He wanted to be with Sinbad, and he could feel Sinbad unconscious want: the way the thief would search for him with his eyes, would touch him with hungry fingers trying to stay casual, would listen to his voice as well as to his silence. Maybe Sinbad would never understand what it was, maybe he would understand tonight. All that is certain is that Gunnar knows, when Sinbad doesn’t.

But that wasn’t the whole point. Beyond the fact that he and Sinbad were dancing around each other, there was the fact that everyone in that room were birds of a feather. They all shared something deep and strong: what with the lives they lived, the most difficult thing in the world was to find someone you can fully trust, and yet, none of them was ever afraid of being hurt inside those walls, living in their own little universe that was The Ship.

Gunnar watched them all night after night, and he knew that, somehow, what they had revolved around Sinbad, as if Sinbad was a flag to which they all swore loyalty.

It’s tragic, really, that their compass, their guiding star would be that street thief, responsible for his brother’s death, carrying around that weight like a curse around his neck, making him suffocate.

But it was nonetheless, and Gunnar knew this, even if Sinbad didn’t. That’s why, when Sinbad comes, the last hour before sunrise, he says, out loud, for the whole room to hear:

“I’m glad you’re here. We need you.”

Sinbad stops in his tracks, staring at him.

“Me?” And that’s it, Gunnar is afraid Sinbad is going to deny being their leader, their glue, and there won’t ever be a union strong enough between them all. But Sinbad does the exact opposite: “I came here every night. We need to be together. We were waiting for you.”

Gunnar realizes that yes; he was the last one to arrive, not tonight, but the last to arrive in the critical moment. Because he only comes when he hits rock bottom. He abandoned them all for so many weeks.

“You’re also a part of this, Gunnar. You can’t leave us like that.”

Gunnar looks around: the Mouse, the Princess, the Cook, the Doc – those are his friends, his _family_ , and it’s about time he stops running from it. It’s time, no more “not yet”.

“I- I won’t. Not anymore.”

Sinbad nods and smiles, and the moment lose its tension. Sinbad sits on the floor as he usually does, a bottle of rum in his hand: he closes his mouth around the rim, and Gunnar knows he can’t look, but then he doesn’t know anymore.

Why should he look away? He’s been telling himself he knows Sinbad wants it as well. It’s not as if he’s afraid of what anyone could do with the information that he’s attracted to another man: the two of them are the most dangerous around here, violent and powerful. There’s nothing to be afraid of. No more “not yet”.

So Gunnar sits beside Sinbad, closer than he ever dared, one leg resting against the man’s leg. Gunnar doesn’t hesitate to put an arm around him, even when his heart beat faster: he’s not running anymore.

Sinbad looks up from his bottle, a small, uncertain smile: it takes a few seconds, but finally he reaches for Gunnar hand resting on his shoulder, traps Gunnar fingers with his, asks with his body for Gunnar to stay.

And Gunnar will stay, and he’ll enjoy this, but first they have to decide how to survive.

“What are we gonna do?” Gunnar asks, in a clear voice so everyone in the room hears it.

Sinbad looks around: their little desperate family, trying hard to stay alive, drifting in a storm.

“We should get out of here.”

And so, that night, the ship sails.

 

_“They always lived in the same ship._  
Birds of a feather.  
They were from the same marine, the same Queen,  
swore under the same flag  
fluttering on the mast.  
And, like this, they were guided by the stars,  
lifting the anchor and cutting the knots,  
leaving behind the harbor and the quay.  
Shouting at the top of their lungs.  
Searching for the vast,  
for the most intense silence  
that lies after the storms. 

_And, like this, they kept going ahead,_  
making love over the seven seas.  
Swelling the water with seaweed and fish,  
following the winds,  
the tides and the streams.  
The path of the dolphins,  
the route of the whales.  
And there were no reefs  
There were no shoals.  
No more fears, no more pains,  
There was no weariness.  
There was only, there was only blue and space.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Again, the link to the song that inspired this work (besides the great prompt) is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rdaVBBEltA


End file.
